Monday, 21 January 2013

#29: Midnight Rogue

MIDNIGHT ROGUE

Graeme Davis

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Number 29 in
the original series sees a welcome return to the mean streets of Port
Blacksand, which we first visited in depth in City Of Thieves and then passed through en route to somewhere else in
Temple Of Terror. This book has
not been re-issued in the Wizard Books series and, frankly, this is a great
shame as MR is actually a really fun
FF. I emphasize the word “fun”, rather than using a word like “excellent”, as
this FF does have its shortcomings, but it’s good enough to be a worthy further
visit to Port Blacksand, rather than making us wish we’d never bothered going
back after the dizzy heights of COT.

This book is
the first FF to really put the player into an anti-hero role, which makes it
intriguing from the outset. You play a thief who has one night in which to pass
the initiation to join PB’s Thieves’ Guild. The initiation itself involves
tracking down and stealing a priceless jewel called the Eye of the Basilisk - anyone
who has played Ian Livingstone’s abysmal Eye
Of The Dragon will be pleased to hear that not all FFs that involve finding
unimaginably valuable jewels named after the ocular units of various lizardine
creatures are terrible. The jewel is owned by a wealthy merchant called Brass
(ha, ha) and you are first required to sneak around PB trying to find clues as
to where exactly Brass is stashing said valuable object. You don’t actually get
to properly see much of PB as you can only explore three pre-defined areas, but
this does make sense as you probably wouldn’t go on any wild goose chases if
you are a competent thief – you’d be straight to the point and out as quickly
as possible, rather than wasting time having a bit of a look around. Once you’ve
found the clues you need, you are then sent on a very linear dungeon trawl to
ultimately find the jewel at the end of it.

There is much
more depth to the plot than just its general essence, however, some of which
makes sense and adds to the atmosphere of the book and some of which is plain
ludicrous. Depending on which route you take into various locations
you can see different angles on things and gradually learn what you ought to be
doing as you go along. For example, if you try to access Brass’ house by
shinning up the drainpipe and peering in through the bedroom windows you can establish
who is in what rooms and therefore learn what you will meet once you’ve gone into
the building via the front door (which it quickly becomes apparent is what you
need to be doing.) I like this aspect as it adds a three-dimensional feel to
the environment rather than the usual flat, one-way-in-one-way-out approach that
you often find in FFs. There are relatively few encounters and combats within
PB itself which is logical as you would not want to be drawing attention to
yourself or making waves in a place where thieves are hunted by the city
guards. Once you pass into the dungeon trawl there are numerous encounters and
traps which, again, makes sense as this second part of the book is effectively
a test in the vein of Deathtrap Dungeon.
The two parts of the book add variety and also add meaning to this being an
initiation that involves rather more than just pinching stuff, which would be a
bit one-note. There is some nice continuity from other trips to PB: city guards
are dressed the same as those in COT,
Lord Azzur’s palace is still impenetrable, Madame Star is back (and is still
useless), the pubs are still very unpleasant, you can meet Nicodemus (although
if you do somehow end up at his hut, you are dead as he still enjoys turning
people into newts), etc. Again, this is a nice touch as it adds to the
atmosphere and makes PB feel familiar to the player, rather than being totally
unconnected to the other FFs that are set there. The plot is also very “interactive”
in the RPG sense as you have considerable scope to explore and revisit areas
rather than following a linear route, although the dungeon trawl is literally a
straight line but this could be deliberate to avoid the book feeling unbalanced
towards this section and, therefore, make the player lose the sense of character
and place that the first part creates in abundance.

Unfortunately,
the RPG element also adds the one really silly part of this book’s plot – if you
do not have the clues you need to leave PB at the end of the first part, you
are allowed to go back to paragraph 1 and search about again which presents the
credibility-losing problem that PB then resets itself, which is a problem FF rarely
ever addresses properly. Granted, in MR
this isn’t overly noticeable as there aren’t many encounters, kills, etc to
have to keep re-visiting, but you could find yourself re-collecting more of the
same items. The tavern, the sleeping beggar in the Merchants’ Guild and the
re-sets of Brass’ house are more annoying but you might not actually visit the
same places more than once unless you know for certain that you need to go back
if you’ve established that you’ve missed something important. The fact that you
can return to the start an infinite number of times does suggest that this is a
very long night and removes some of the sense of urgency, as well as making no
sense plot-wise!

There is a neat twist at the end when it becomes apparent that the whole exercise was
just one big test as the jewel itself is a fake made of glass. This does also present
a bit of a plot dilemma though – given that Brass is the pivot to finding the
jewel, are we supposed to think that he is in on it all along? This is never
answered so we just have to either draw our own conclusions or assume that
there’s a big gaping hole in the crux of the storyline.

This book
does not simply offer a (generally) coherent plot and lots of appropriate atmosphere.
To help you get into the feel of your anti-hero character (you are, after all,
generally used to playing all-round good guys in FFs), there are some neat
additional rules and game mechanics added, albeit with mixed results. As you
need to move stealthily and silently, you are limited to only being able to
carry six backpack items. This is a nice touch, but it is rendered almost
meaningless as rarely does anything you find actually qualify as a backpack
item, plus weapons (presumably noisy sometimes?) do not count as encumbrance.
OK, you have a shortsword, not a regular sword, but all the same, this feature hasn’t
been incorporated well at all. Plus, on starting the game, you are told that
two item slots are already taken up by your Potion and Provisions which makes
you feel that this rule will be a real challenge. Sadly, it is not exploited much
and is a wasted opportunity. There is also another small plot niggle here – why
does one provision take up the same space as ten? Odd.

A generally better
employed new game mechanic is the use of Special Skills of a thiefy nature: you
can pick three from Climb, Hide, Pick Lock, Pick Pocket, Secret Signs, Sneak, and
Spot Hidden. Sadly, whilst there are many references asking if you have these
(and the deployment is fairly balanced across all of them), it becomes quickly
apparent that some will be far more useful than others and, if you didn’t
choose the best ones, you will go around and around in an endless circle back
to section 1 until you either die or lose interest and give up. Hide, Sneak,
Climb, and Spot Hidden can often be substituted for successful tests of Skill
or Luck (although there are so many of these tests that you do need very high
Skill and Luck stats to get through this way, which could be intentional.) Pick
Pocket is largely useless and offers few benefits, although this could be a
clever feature as you are fairly likely to choose this very thiefy talent, only
to discover it’s hopeless, so we’ll give that one the benefit of the doubt as (probably)
a good piece of game design. Secret Signs, whilst sounding mysterious, is the
worst of the lot as you normally end up deciphering fairly incongruous Thieves’
Guild emblems that it transpires you don’t understand anyway – it’s handy in
the tavern to get info but the info isn’t essential, and it adds some plot
depth near the end of the dungeon trawl when you can realise that a dead body
is a failed testee, but it’s generally no use to you overall. On the other hand,
it is not possible to beat the book without Pick Lock (and Climb will become
essential as well, depending on your Skill/Luck situation.) Frustratingly
enough, or very helpfully, depending on which skills you started with, the book
knows that Pick Lock and Climb are essentials and you can find items in PB that
act as substitutes for these skills, which is helpful but is also part of the
biggest failing of this book – it is far too forgiving to the point of being
one of the easiest FFs ever.

Not being
content with just allowing repeated resets if you can’t get out of PB,
generally ignoring its item restriction rule, giving you the two key skills on
a plate, and letting you literally see where you are going wrong, the book has
yet more ways of helping you along. If you head off in the wrong direction in
the dungeon or in either the Merchants’ Guild or Brass’ House, the book will
repeatedly try to convince you to go in the right direction instead. In some
cases, it eventually kills you for not listening to its suggestions, but in most
cases it just turns you around and makes you go the right way instead. This is hardly
a challenge, plus the rare occasions that you are killed instantly are usually
the result of rank stupidity on your behalf – indeed, a fair bit of this book
can be beaten on common sense alone. Granted this makes you feel the character,
but it also takes away the element of danger that is key in FFs. There is a
small challenge in that you can only access The Noose (a sort of thief-friendly
part of the city) from section 1 (and you need to go there to get a clue), but,
as you can keep re-setting the game, it quickly becomes clear that maybe you
should be going to this otherwise exclusive location (and I can’t help feeling
this might be an error in the construction, maybe?) Plus, I’d have thought that
a thief would probably head straight there to try to build up some allies
amongst his own kind before tackling the (theoretically) more hostile territories
of the Merchants’ Guild and Brass’ House. If all this isn’t enough help, if you
don’t know where Brass is hiding the jewel by the time you decide to stop
searching the three areas, you are then offered the chance to try various other
(more famous) parts of the city, all of which seem fairly suicidal to visit
(Lord Azzur’s palace, Nicodemus’ hut??) and, if you try this, the book goes
into overdrive to talk you out of it. If you really are daft enough to ignore
its advice, it will then kill you, but you wouldn’t be very likely to get into
this situation as your wariness as a thief should have turned you away by now.

Personally, I struggle to see how you wouldn’t know where Brass is hiding the
jewel as it’s laid on pretty thick, but there is a definite challenge in
finding the three actual numerical codes you need to get out of PB – this aspect
is really good and makes cheating impossible, but it’s only a matter of time
from repeatedly visiting the locations before you will find the codes.

Interestingly, if this book used the Time feature that some FFs use, the
constant resets would be offset by limiting how long you can waste going round
and round the same three places (if you really need to do this anyway), but
that would be far too hard for this most forgiving of FFs! Even the
inevitable FF falling at the final hurdle feature is dumbed-down. Granted, you
can die at this point, but you might have just acquired a brand-new item in the
previous chamber that is probably the answer... and if you haven’t, the book actually
allows you to turn to a clue paragraph where your thiefy senses tell you to go
back and try to find something that might help in said previous room. Any sense
of difficulty that may still have been lingering in your mind will be gone by
now (unless you’re dead, of course!)

The art adds to the sense of place very effectively, especially the images within PB itself. We’ve
already noted its neat consistency with other PB-set FFs, but the art itself is
very well drawn and is full and vivid. The dungeon-set images also have a
suitable dark gloom to them, plus there is a distinct feeling of night in all
the images which works well and is in context. I have only one issue with the
art and that is the image on entry 134 when you enter Brass’ office – the picture
is clearly from the outside looking in through the window, yet you are actually
in the office at this point so maybe there was a misunderstanding or this
picture was originally intended to be used somewhere else? The cover also suffers
from an odd problem: the jewel is stated as being yellow in the book’s text,
yet it is red on the cover. Is this another paragraph 134 incident or was the
cover picture simply never colour-corrected? The blue background and the pink
ROGUE lettering look very washed-out and I’m not convinced the cover was intended
to look like this. An interesting point to note with this cover is that it is
the only cover that shows YOU on it, albeit in fairly non-committal and general
shadowy humanoid terms. Overall though, in spite of it looking wrong, there is
a night-time feel to the cover and it is quite nice.

An
interesting small point of note with this FF is that it includes a few fake
paragraphs (eg: 260, 275) to prevent you from cheating by reading random
entries and trying to piece the solution together. This is a neat feature but I
have two problems with it: 1) This is basically a waste of paragraphs and I don’t
like to see this in a FF; 2) This book is so easy I fail to see why you would
ever need to cheat!

So, difficulty-wise
this book is too simple and far too helpful (although that’s a nice antidote to
brutally harsh FFs such as Crypt Of The Sorceror
or Chasms Of Malice.) However, in
terms of atmosphere and the feeling of the fun of playing a miscreant, it is
actually really good and I really enjoy it for its originality and the variety
it adds to the series. If it were a little harder it would make you have to
plan your skills and route out more, learning from past plays, but it’s still
got a lot to recommend it and is a worthwhile entry into the series.

2 comments:

given that Brass is the pivot to finding the jewel, are we supposed to think that he is in on it all along? This is never answered so we just have to either draw our own conclusions

Never answered within the gamebook, but Brass reappears in the multiplayer adventure in the Advanced Fighting Fantasy book Blacksand!, which confirms that he works with the Guild and helps with the initiations.

BTW, The Riddling Reaver never goes anywhere near Blacksand. Maybe you were thinking of Temple of Terror.

I wouldn't say this was the first book where you played an anti hero in Seas of blood you played a pirate who had to loot more than his rival in order to become the top pirate and in The Warlock of firetop mountian you want to kill Zagor who posed no threat just because you wanted his treasure